Sunday, December 7, 2014

The tale of the Inca Babies 2007 resurrection continues in splendour with The Stereo Plan, the third installment of their Death Blues trilogy that began with Death Message Blues (Black Lagoon, 2010) and Deep Dark Blue (Black Lagoon, 2012).

While Death Message Blues was an album heavily reminiscent of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, as Inca Babies came to terms with the very sad passing of bassist Bill Bonney (AKA: Bill Marten), this influence is much less apparent here. Similarly, the band have long since moved on from the very heavy influence of The Birthday Party that was so often remarked upon with their earlier releases back in the 80s like Rumble (Black Lagoon, 1984) or the brilliant This Train... (Black Lagoon, 1986).

What does remain however, is the band's obvious love for the psycho-billy style, somewhat like The Cramps but without the undergraduate innuendo, and the slow psychedelic surf-rock of guitarists like Link Wray,making this a quite brilliant road-trip album.

Unlike certain other reanimated "goth" groups from the 80's we could mention here, the production is sleek and there is little filler to be found. The Stereo Plan is a genuinely well-rounded album consisting of great songs, giving lie to the idea that old dogs can't learn new tricks and should be put down to die.

With 14 new songs, there's very much here to like. We open with the title track "The Stereo Plan", a tale of trying to recover one's youth by drowning in your own musical past, an experience I suspect most music followers of a certain age can relate to. This is followed by "Scatter", a wonderfully strong track that when trying to program the October edition of Behind the Mirror was simply a no-brainer to play.

Scatter
It doesn't stop there though. We also have the wonderfully catchy "Feast With Panthers", reportedly the next single release and "Absolute Leader of the World", but for me the standout must be "Stand Down Lucifer", a wonderfully aggressive track and easily up to going into the cage match with old favourites like "Daniella" or "Correction Stack".

Absolute Leader of the World

The crew of the "Hulme Cramps" are clearly still up for going into battle, and "The Stereo Plan" does little to disappoint. If you're lucky enough to be in the right parts of the world, the band apparently have extensive touring plans for next year.

Now, what price a single of "Stand Down Lucifer" with a remix of "Splatter Ballistics Cop" as a B Side?

A Welcome and Introduction

Plunder the Tombs was started back in 2010 by way of looking back on a musical past that I felt in sore need of curation.

It was a strange and sad time when what passed for “Goth” in clubs seemed a pale imitator of what once was, following first a decade of cookie-cutter Sisters of the Nephilim clone bands and then another decade of industrial dance being palmed off to younger audiences as a type of faux goth. When on rare occasion DJs in “Goth” clubs did finally become brave enough to play something like Bauhaus it was not untypical to have the dance floor clear, and it became obvious that the memory, meaning and legacy of much that had gone before had been lost.

It’s probably safe to say that the boundaries of what was “Goth” were never clearly defined. An absolute blessing for those bands on the original scene before it had a name pinned to the donkey, but an outright curse for those who came later and found rules had been imposed to dictate that which was and that which was not acceptable. Worse still was to come in the 90s from a lazy and unquestioning media who simply assumed that anything that wore black and make up was by definition “Goth”, thus allowing all manner of pretenders licence, and maximising confusion as to what the term actually referred to.

This has gone on for way too long and its time is at an end. Neo Post-Punk bands now proliferate across Europe, old long dead Goth bands rise from their crypts in the UK, and new deathrock bands are breeding like rabbits up the west coast of America. It is time to reclaim our scene back from metal bands and ravers in disguise.

While the Plunder the Tombs of old focused on what had gone before, there are now far too many exciting new things to ignore. We roar back to life in a reboot, covering past , present and things yet to come.

Let us plunder the tombs….

About Me

A DJ throughout the 90s at numerous Goth night clubs in Perth including The Cell, Dominion and others he was probably far too drunk to remember, largely as a result of his preference to work for bar tabs over cash. Also helped found 6RTR fm's Goth & Industrial showcase Darkwings.
More recent projects include the currently dormant Descent - a small night dedicated to playing genuinely good Goth music both old and new in preference to packing the dance floor with songs everyone had heard 20 million times before. He currently runs a monthly show on Behind the Mirror on 6RTR fm which can be heard on Wednesdays at 11pm WST.
Rumour has it he once masterminded an ill-advised Goth fanzine "Small Pleasures" that in retrospect, he remains profoundly grateful never made it off his desk.